Velvet or Roses – Towards a Democratic Armenia? A comparative analysis of post-Soviet Armenia in the context of its 2018 revolution By Nikolas Schuster
This essay takes a first look at Armenia’s 2018 ‘velvet revolution’ by analysing its political system since independence and comparing it to the circumstances of the 2003 Georgian Rose Revolution. By considering parameters such as protection of civil liberties and freedom of elections, it characterises the regimes in Armenia since 1991 as competitive authoritarian according to Levitsky and Way’s definition. Low levels of influence from the West and prevailing informal structures made caused this state of affairs to persist. A first look at the events of 2018 reveals that Nikol Pashinyan, the new prime minister, acts more democratically than his predecessors. However, having established that the Rose Revolution happened under similar circumstances with similar goals, its failure to directly advance democratisation shows that systemic reasons for authoritarian structures are prone to persist even if the political leadership has democratising ambitions. On 14 January 2019 the Armenian parliament elected Nikol Pashinyan prime minister for the second time – upon which he declared, ‘power has been returned to the people and democracy has been established in Armenia.’1 Pashinyan’s first election on 7 May 2018 was the culmination of what he called Armenia’s ‘velvet revolution’, which had caused two-term president Serzh Sargsyan to resign.2 This essay will, in a first step, analyse the regimes formerly ruling Armenia and, in a second step, make a first attempt to classify this change Nikolas Schuster would like to be a student of Physics and Central and East European Studies. Since the university did not allow this, he is currently in his third year of the Theoretical Physics programme, having previously taken CEES and Russian courses. After graduation, he is planning to continue his education in the social sciences. 1
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, ‘Pashinian Reappointed Armenian PM After Securing Parliament Majority’.
2
Aslanian and Lazarian, ‘Pashinian Vows To Keep Up Protests’. 38
